


Small

by PaintedLily22



Series: Out of the Ashes [1]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Fluff, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, Sam Wilson is a Gift, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, kinda post Ultron but it doesn't matter much
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 13:00:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12036393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaintedLily22/pseuds/PaintedLily22
Summary: Sam never thought that Captain America could look small.Now he didn’t mean the under-fire-full-super-soldier-body-hide-behind-the-shield thing that he will never, ever understand. No.Sam meant pre-Captain America small. Pre-serum small. Steve Rogers small.





	Small

Sam never thought that Captain America could look small.  
   
Now he didn’t mean the under-fire-full-super-soldier-body-hide-behind-the-shield thing that he will never, ever understand. No.  
   
Sam meant pre-Captain America small. Pre-serum small. Steve Rogers small.  
   
Sam thought that he had a pretty good grasp on who Steve was, what he stood for. Travelling and getting shot at on an almost a daily basis forms a type of bond that is difficult to understand for people who had never been there, never experienced it. The two were close- but it is impossible to know who someone is if an entire piece of them is missing.  
   
Now, however, he realized that he had never actually met Steve Rogers—he couldn’t have, because Steve had been missing a piece of himself for almost 70 years. Sam had never met Steve, because Steve Rogers didn’t exist without James Buchanan Barnes.  
   
Twenty-six hours ago, Sam and Steve had been raiding a small Hydra base in the south of France in the hope that they would find a small clue as to where the Winter Soldier AKA James Barnes was. The only thing they walked away with was a sore shoulder on Sam’s behalf, and the promise of more haunted nights for Steve. The plane ride home was quiet. Both men were tired. For Sam, he personally didn’t know how much more of this never-ending, fruitless search the two of them could take. Sam had now been away from the VA so long, that he was starting to forget he actually worked there. The shadows under Steve’s eyes had never fully faded after the Potomac nearly six months ago, and he talked less and less as each lead turned to dust with no new information. They were grasping at straws and Sam wasn’t sure how many were left until Steve finally cracked.  
   
Fourteen and a half hours later, it was 1:26 AM as the two men climbed the stairs to Steve’s apartment. It had become an un-spoken agreement that if the two returned from a mission late at night or they were just plain exhausted, Sam would sleep in Steve’s extra bedroom until the following morning, given that Brooklyn was a lot closer to Tony’s private airstrip than Sam’s place. That was the plan at least until Steve unlocked the door to the apartment and discovered the Winter Soldier sitting on the couch, fast asleep. As soon as the door opened, Bucky snapped awake and jumped to his feet as if he had never intended to fall asleep and was caught off guard.  
   
After a moment of tense shock, Bucky let out a barely audible “Steve” and the stillness broke. In an instant, Steve was across the room, pulling Bucky into a hug that exuded so much feeling Sam felt uncomfortable watching it. Even more surprising to Sam, was Bucky circling his arms around Steve just as tightly, just as desperate as Steve for the person that he lost nearly 70 years ago.  
   
Ten hours ago, Steve had convinced Bucky to clean up a bit and had the small wounds dotting the soldier’s body bandaged as Sam warmed up some canned tomato soup on the stove. Bucky barely got half a mug down before Steve finally accepted that he couldn’t eat anymore. “Accepted” might be too strong of a word- Steve only stopped pushing the food on Bucky once Sam had pointed out that Bucky was more likely to fall asleep and drown in the soup then actually finish it.  
   
 There was not one moment, even while moving from room to room, where the two super soldiers were not touching or at very least within a short reach of each other. Sam watched with careful eyes as Steve stood to take Bucky’s mug to the sink and saw the tension that grew in the Soldier’s body with every step Steve took away from him- even if it was just around the island countertop. The muscles along his jaw tightened, his flesh shoulder raised as the tendons in his arm tightened with his grip on the edge of the counter, and he straightened his spine as if he had been leaning on something that was now gone, and he now had to hold himself up on his own.  
   
Every movement Steve made was mirrored in a reaction form Barnes. If the blonde shifted his weight from one side to the other, the brunette’s leg would move with it. If Steve cocked his head, Bucky’s arm, flesh or metal—it made no difference, would extend out, generally closer to Steve. At first, Sam thought it was because the Soldier hadn’t been around people much, especially in a casual setting, or was nervously tracking the movements of the Captain. The longer Sam sat and watched the interaction, the more he realized that Barnes wasn’t conscious of the movements at all. It dawned on him as Steve leant across the counter toward Bucky and saw the brunette’s muscles once again go slack, that despite the 70 years spent apart and the massive amount of shit that the two men had gone through, they were still just as conscious of each other, just as connected as they were back in the streets of Brooklyn.  
   
With that sudden realization, Sam also grasped just how much Steve had been hurting since waking up from the ice a few years ago. Sam thought that it had been the pain of loosing a home, loosing Peggy, the commandos and a sort of PTSD after the war, but it was more than that. Whatever the connection Rogers and Barnes shared, it went far beyond a normal friendship or brother-in-arms—it was deeper relationship than most people have in their entire lives.  
   
Steve wasn’t missing just a small piece of himself- he had lost a piece so large that it effected his entire being. To loose something so… significant would be devastating. Sam didn’t even know how Steve had gotten out of bed every morning, and he was only witnessing a small portion of what their relationship was as he stood in the kitchen, watching Steve coax Bucky into standing up.  
   
Sam stayed where he was as Steve reached out to Bucky, tugging on metal fingers as if they had always been that way. Bucky stood, momentarily placing flesh-fingers to the blonde’s side, as if grounding himself around Steve, as if he was a gravitational point.  There was no need, Sam noticed, as the Winter Soldier had perfect balance, although it was clear that he hadn’t slept properly in weeks. Their entire interaction was almost purely a touch-react basis; each man seemed to instinctually know what the other wanted through touches and glances.  
   
The first sign of hesitation in response to Steve was once the two headed out of the kitchen to the hallway leading to the two small bedrooms and bathroom. Bucky’s fingers pulled back on Steve’s as he stopped, causing Steve to turn around. Steve glanced half questionably and half worriedly at their linked fingers, then up to the other’s face.  
   
“I uh…” Bucky said, voice cracking slightly; he stopped before finishing his sentence, and Sam wasn’t sure if he didn’t want to speak his insecurity aloud or couldn’t find the words to express his uneasiness. Both, Sam decided was most likely, as Bucky’s eyes seemed to be out-of-focus and staring at a spot just over Steve’s left shoulder.  
   
Sam didn’t know how, and he wasn’t really sure he wanted to, but after a couple of seconds of Steve searching Bucky’s face, his face softened in understanding.  
   
“You don’t want to be alone?” Steve asked. Bucky let out a breath and meet Steve’s eyes, looking considerably relived and nodding ever so slightly.  
   
Steve gripped Bucky’s hand tighter and turned to Sam, opening his mouth to talk when Sam cut him off.  
   
“I’m still staying. If you hear the door open and close in the morning, it’s just me. I’ll go get some stuff for breakfast.” Sam said, more for Bucky’s benefit than Steve’s.  
   
“Thank you, Sam.” Steve smiled at him, and once again Sam realized that he had never seen it before- not a true one, at least. Bucky looked at him too, not quite smiling but Sam saw the gratitude in his eyes as Steve led Bucky to the first door in the hallway that lead to his own room. Bucky followed, closing the door behind him but leaving it cracked—probably for listening purposes. Sam rinsed the pan and Bucky’s mug out before heading to the other room, trying not to pay attention to the muffled mumbling coming from Steve’s room as he passed it.  
   
Two hours ago, Sam stared at the clock on the nightstand as the minutes ticked by before accepting that his day was not going to be filled with Netflix and Thai food, and got up to go to the store. His body ached after the last five days and yet again, Sam had wondered how nice it would be to have a super enhanced body that healed almost automatically. He tugged on a pair of jeans and a hoodie he left at Steve's specifically for this purpose, shuffled through his discarded gear for his wallet and keys, and tried to walk down the hallway quietly enough that it would (hopefully) not wake the two 95-year-old giants, but just loud enough that if one of them had woken up, he wouldn't be mistaken for someone trying to break in.  
   
Currently, Sam was trying to convince his body that he did not, in fact, need to make two trips to the apartment and back to haul in the massive amounts of groceries he had gotten, before resigning himself to the knowledge that he actually, in fact, did. With the way Steve's metabolism plowed through calories like it was nothing, Sam figured that Bucky's was probably on the same high-functioning level as Steve and doubled what he normally would have gotten for a few days. That is, provided that the ex- Winter's Soldier's body could actually process real food. Sam needed a cup of coffee before he tried to figure that one out. He clambered up the stairs as efficiently as he could, struggled through the front door, again in the strange quiet-but-not-too-quiet way he had left, and set his bags down on the counter.  
   
Before going for the rest of the groceries, he filled the coffee pot as full as possible and added an extra scoop and a half of coffee grounds more than he normally does. He had a feeling the next 24 hours were going to require copious amounts of caffeine. Trekking for months through Europe, Asia, and south America getting blown up, shot at, and covered in every mud imaginable, and where did they find the infamous assassin? In the damn living room. He sighed again. Leaving the coffee to brew, Sam went to collect the other bags.  
   
He hadn't meant to, but out of habit Sam glanced at the still slightly-ajar door leading to Steve's room as he rounded the corner in the kitchen to the hallway. He froze as he took in the sight through the crack, as the final puzzle piece to Steve slid into place.  
   
Steve Rogers was small. Until the serum, Steve was one of the smallest people in New York.  
   
Bucky Barnes was the only person in the world who Small Steve Rogers knew in-and-out. Bucky Barnes was the only person that knew that Steve Rogers was not, in fact, small at all. Steve Rogers was Bucky Barnes' entire world.  
   
And now, possibly 70 years late and a whole lot of hurt and misery later, someone finally understood that there was no Steve Rogers or Bucky Barnes without the other.  
   
As Sam looked into the crack in the bedroom door, he saw Steve sprawled out, face down on the edge of his mattress, left arm hanging over the side with his fingertips just barely brushing the floor. His hair was sticking out every direction imaginable, mouth slightly ajar in a silent snore, tucked into the side and protective arm of Bucky. Bucky's arm, the metal one, was lying across Steve, bent at an angle so that his elbow rested in the small of Steve's back, and his hand and fingers were tucked against and under Steve's ribcage, where his shirt was rucked up around Bucky's fingers. Bucky's head was using Steve's shoulder blade as a pillow, his hair slightly obscuring his face, but what Sam could see was peaceful and so deeply asleep, Sam knew he needn't bother trying to move around the apartment quietly. Sam also wondered how long it had been since the soldier had been able to sleep this soundly and came to the conclusion that it had almost certainly been as long as Steve- since D.C., probably longer, due to what little they knew of the Winter Soldiers' history.  
   
Sam smiled and backed away from the door, down to retrieve the rest of the groceries in order to make his breakfast of champions. Or, at least, a breakfast that would feed two genetically enhanced super soldiers that probably ate more than their entire squadron did back in the war. If he very quickly snapped a picture for photo evidence for Natasha later, no one else needed to know.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in finals-induced procrastination because I have feelings about the direction the MCU is going in, and sometimes I just need to go back to the drawing board and make myself feel better.
> 
> There will eventually be more to the series as I use it as a coping mechanism, meaning that the stories aren't necissarily going to be related. Think of them as snapshots. Yeah. Thats a good word for it. 
> 
> Feel free to send in prompts or anything- I welcome the challenge!


End file.
